By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Purchase at Amazon.com and Visit Phil Harvey’s Web Site

Want to take your attention off the election? I’ve got the perfect thriller for you: Show Time by Phil Harvey. An excellent, excellent book and a rollercoaster ride that will have your attention riveted from page 1.

From Harvey’s web site:

Future viewing audiences have become totally desensitized to violence and entirely dependent on sensation to escape their boring workaday lives—an addiction nurtured by the media with graphic portrayals of war and crime and with so-called reality programming. Now, TV execs in pursuit of the only things they care about—higher ratings and bigger paychecks—have created the ultimate reality show: Seven people, each bearing the scars of his or her past, are deposited on an island in the middle of Lake Superior. Given some bare necessities and the promise of $400,000 each if they can endure, the three women and four men risk death by starvation or freezing as the Great Lakes winter approaches. The island is wired for sound, and flying drones provide the video feed, so everything the contestants do and say is broadcast worldwide. Their seven-month ordeal is entirely unscripted, they can’t ask for help or they forfeit the prize, and as far as the network is concerned—the fewer survivors the better.

I tell you, I needed to read something good after Tuesday and this did not disappoint. Harvey is a wordsmith and has great insight into the psychology of his characters. You get to know each one. The mixture of horror and mystery is simply addictive. The plot is fun and fast. He accurately shows the moral decay of society and where it leads. This is an adult novel, so not for the kids, but it is a shocking glimpse into brutal survival with explicit overtones. It is the ultimate reality show.

You can purchase Show Time at Amazon.com.